The food from that era really cracks me up and grosses me out! LOL Ham loaf? Jello with mayo...what was she going for? I always thought it was exaggerated in tv shows and movies but found an old cookbook and yep....it was all for real. ;)
shareYes, it was all real. My father loved jello and he loved a particular black cherry jello salad my mother made at holiday time. It was black cherry flavor jello, now quite hard to find, with canned black bing cherries and canned pineapple chunks. Mom made it in a big rectangular glass dish and it was served by cutting out squares of so it was a big ourple square in your plate, about an inch thick. And my dad would top his with mayonnaise like he was spreading butter on bread, only thick. My kids are disgusted by the idea! But since I grew up with this salad, I do put a dab of mayo on mine and it tastes like old times.
Google recipes for entertaining in the 1960s and you'll get the idea. I think I heard one if the wives mention bananas with ham or some other meat, too.Yuck!
It ain't the Ganges, but you go with what you got." ~ Ken Talley, "The Fifth of July"
Here is a hilarious Buzzfeed article about this kind of food.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ariannarebolini/truly-upsetting-vintage-recipes#.tj4DpodyQ
It ain't the Ganges, but you go with what you got." ~ Ken Talley, "The Fifth of July"
A site that's been documenting those old horror-food recipe pamphlets since the early days of the web is
The Gallery of Regrettable Food
http://lileks.com/institute/gallery/index.html
Every recipe made me gag more than the previous picture!
shareMy father loved jello and he loved a particular black cherry jello salad my mother made at holiday time. It was black cherry flavor jello, now quite hard to find, with canned black bing cherries and canned pineapple chunks. Mom made it in a big rectangular glass dish and it was served by cutting out squares of so it was a big ourple square in your plate, about an inch thick.
Put some grated carrots in lime Jello and pour it into a fish-shaped mold.
The perfect dessert for boiled cabbage and a ham bone (extra vinegar, please!).
Now listen here, you mugs, nobody gets to say 'Meh' anymore unless you're Edward G. Robinson, see?
My grandmother was known for making lime jello with cottage cheese and pineapple chunks in it. It was served on top of a lettuce leaf and topped with a shmear of mayonnaise. Not knowing this as a child, and assuming it was whipped cream, I dug in, only to be completely revolted and run crying from the table.
If you really want to stroll back in time, try and get your hands on a set of slim cookbooks put out by Better Homes & Gardens in the early 1960s. My mom had the whole set and I now have a couple of them. In these pages you will find such wonders as tuna aspic and olive-pimento loaf. I do have a Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook I got for my wedding, but it's the 1999 version. My how things have changed.
For a short time they did have vegetable flavored Jell-Os, maybe it was one of those? They discontinued it long before I was born in the early nineties, but I imagine it wouldn't be as unusual to mayonnaise with that as it would with a fruit flavor.
It looked like lime flavor though, I thought maybe whatever she put on it was whipped cream from a jar because the aerosol cans hadn't been invented yet, although it seemed a little too heavy.
No, I am sure it was lime flavor. There were a LOT of weird Jello combinations in the sixties in particular. My mother and one of my sisters who seems to be lost in a time warp still like and occasionally make some of these monstrosities.
Believe me, mayonnaise mixed with Jello was just the beginning of some of these strange combinations I remember seeing at many family reunions growing up. Most of the recipes were either some strange looking Jello mold salad concoction or in more recent years desserts involving Jello and Cool Whip but the fruit flavor Jello and mayonnaise concoction is not surprising to me at all.
Did you ever have any of the lime-mayo jello? I'm curious about how it would taste but not sure if I would like to make it.
I have not. I'll let you try it first and let me know what it tastes like. ;)
shareI generally avoided most of the Jello concoctions I have seen over the years.
However, when I worked at an office in Atlanta over 30 years ago we had a cafeteria where about once every couple of weeks the salad course of our meal was canned halved pears served with a dollop of mayonnaise and crackers. I didn't think I would like it but after trying it it was actually pretty good. When I first saw it I thought fruit and mayonnaise would not go well together but as they say, you never know until you try it. I have since tried fruit salads that used mayonnaise as a dressing and we used to eat sandwiches made with pineapple slices and mayonnaise in the summer so the lime Jello with mayonnaise may have seemed a logical combination and seriously does not surprise me at all.
Since I never really liked lime Jello at all, any green Jello concoction would not have been something I would even attempt to try.
I've seen pear halves served with cottage cheese, also canned peach halves with cottage cheese. In fact I bet I can go upstairs to the hospital's (where I work) cafeteria and find exactly that.
shareMy mother always made Jello salad at Thanksgiving. Jello, fruit. mini marshmallows and whipped cream, not mayo. Of course I can't really remember any Thanksgiving before 1970 so maybe she switched when she realized it was gross.
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I don't think she ever used mayo, but my mom has made some interesting desserts over the years & still loves to make desserts using jello. Oh yes there's the Sunshine/carrot salad that's made by mixing shredded carrots into orange jello, and the ice cream jello desserts where she mixes vanilla ice cream or cool whip into the jello before it sets, creating a (typically pink, because she often uses strawberry jello) opaque, gelatinous custard that she sometimes adds frozen strawberries to as well. Then there's this salad that apparently my dad's aunt Lois made back in the 1950s & 60s, which he has mom recreate every Christmas, which originally consisted of mixing lime jello, crushed pineapples, and pimento cheese spread together (before the jello sets), then freezing...creating an interesting sort of frozen ice cream type of dessert. lol.
My mom is of the generation after these astronaut wives, in that she would've been a young teen in the early 1960s when these early NASA missions took place...young enough to be still in school, yet old enough to just start learning how to cook...so in part that's why she still makes jello desserts sometimes. lol.
There was a celery-flavored Jello. Was not a fan.
shareHere is the Instagram account of the show's food stylist: https://instagram.com/jelloandcasseroles/. Very interesting...
shareThis was the 60's right? So everyone was being introduced to the wonders of "Mary Jane"? Have you ever had the munchies? I once ate Sour Patch Kids dipped in Guacamole and thought it was the most delicious thing ever. That's the only explanation I can come up with regarding the food of these times lol.
shareMy Mother had the Jello mold with all the holiday attachments to make an impression into the Jello. hahahahahaha
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The comment above about a pear with mayo is still being served in the South today. It is usually served atop an iceberg lettuce leaf. It is a canned pear half with a dollop of mayo in the hole, shredded cheddar cheese on the mayo and a maraschino cherry half on top of the cheese. You will see a platter of these at every church covered dish or after funeral meal you go to.
Another still popular one is orange Jello with fruit cocktail stirred in. This is cut into squares and served on a bed of shredded lettuce and each square is topped with a dollop of mayo.
We love Jello salads here in the South!
The pear OR pineapple ring…. with mayo OR cottage cheese dollop, on the lettuce leaf, with the grated cheese and the cherry on top--yep. All through the 60s, my Mom in Oklahoma.
But we always had the fruit cocktail in strawberry Jello, not (shudder) orange. Lime TASTED like lime, ugh, but it was always what the "showy recipe" ads used--apparently for the vivid green color.
I think of "normal everyday" jello and it's always red--usually just strawberry. Not much else.
I think the only "salad" we ever had at dinner in the 60s was something (canned pear, cottage cheese) on a leaf of Iceberg lettuce. My grandmother would mix pineapple in the cottage cheese; some salad.
I've been reading ahead...
We never had pickled pig's feet, I think that was more of a black think in the Phila. area, but we had Scrapple!
A spicey, fatty block of ground up pork that had everything in it but the Oink. Floured, fried and served with eggs & toast. Might have been the Pennsylvania Dutch answer to Spam, which we ate raw on Wonder Bread with mustard.
Speaking of pickled though, I do remember seeing great big jars of pickled eggs in beet juice at the butcher shop (where you could get fresh liver and toungue). Don't remember ever having one, but I do recall scarfing down sliced canned beets like they were dessert. Probably on a leaf of Iceberg lettuce!
P.S. I can't believe so many folks never had Jello! Ground up boiled horse bones mixed with artificial "fruit" flavor . . . what's not to like?
Now listen here, you mugs, nobody gets to say 'Meh' anymore unless you're Edward G. Robinson, see?
I am almost 31 but have talked with my parents who are Boomers about family recipes. My Grandma used to make blood Pudding. Or serve Cow's Tounge. Yikes!!
shareIf you think the food on this show is bad, just find a Great Depression or World War II cookbook. What with being poor or being under rationing, people ate things like tongue (that's cow's tongue) sandwiches, liverwurst, chopped moistened bread with bits of meat in it, olive loaf lunchmeats, calves brains, roast kidneys, chicken feet, etc. Ham loaf and Jello with mayo sound good in comparison.
shareOh I believe it. I remember cleaning out my Grandma's house when she went into a nursing home. She hoarded everything. Baby spoons, cans, etc. I even found a newspaper about world war 2. Living through the great Depression I guess made her hold onto whatever she could. she passed at age 96.
~Keep on Trucking!~
Linda Y, your posting brought back a lot of cooking related memories.
Even into the 70s when it's time to butcher hogs for barbecuing and hash making, I have come through the kitchen and seen a large pot on the stovetop. When the lid is lifted often there might be a hog face looking back at you.
After cooking and deboning the meat eventually will be used in the preparation of hash. Hash also contains hog liver. Hog intestines are used for the larger sausage links you enjoy for breakfast. These intestines do have to be cleaned due to their previous life function.
How about pickled pigs feet, pig ears, Liver pudding, hog head cheese?
Mix eggs and hog brains together and cook like you normally scramble eggs.
How about fried cow tripe (stomach)?
Grandmother cooked fish with the heads still on.
She also cooked chicken feet. Not much meat there. Feet are still available in major chain food stores. When chicken was fried I always wanted the neck, back, wings. I never expected that one day these same wings could be found on buffaloes. That had to be a city thing. Country folks knew where chicken wings came from.
Now that I've grossed everybody out, let's go have some breakfast!!!
It's interesting how people perceive foods.
I live in a fairly diverse area on the US west coast, and I can go get cow's tongue (lengua) at just about any taco truck or corner taqueria, and it's pretty phenomenal. The way it's prepared, it's some of the most tender meat you'll ever have on tacos.
I can also get chicken feet at any authentic dim sum restaurant, and it's really good too.
In the 70s, my mom would make ham loaf topped with a pineapple slice and a Marischino cherry...HATED it. Every bite - hated. Loved it when they had parties - chipped beef dip, ants on a log, beer nuts, ham rolls, home-made Chex mix, etc.
Grandma (whose stepmother came from WV) would make individual lime jello molds (with some sort of fruit inside), place it on a bed of lettuce and a dollop of mayo on top. This was served with dinner as a side salad. I grew up in the midwest and had always assumed that my grandmother learned this from her step-mother who came from the south. I have never seen the mayo-jello thing outside of the south.
Oh, yeah, and tuna casserole and aspics. Ugh.
shareI worked in a buffet (The Long Table) type and we made jello salad with Mayo and also with sour cream....it was mixed by a mixer and made into a creamy looking (not see thru) gel in a large pan and we cut it into equal size squares. I ate the sour cream one....but the most popular WAS THE ONE WITH MAYO...(of course sugar was added)
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